The Tested
by Dear Aunt Elladora
Summary: Some short drabblelike vignettes about and inspired by tonight's episode, The Test.


**The Dr****eamer  
**Mother," a fourteen year old voice calls in a voice attempting maturity, causing her mother to cast a look over her shoulder toward the kitchen doorway, "I have decided what I would like to do with my life."

The woman sighs, her elbows deep in dish suds, looking back on her daughter in the doorframe. She's leaning against it like those models she's seen on reruns of MTV, one thin arm languidly propped to one side, bellybutton sucked into her spine. Little Julia, always the one with the imagination, her plain brown hair brushed just so and her jeans just right, thinking she's the girl from Los Angeles instead of the girl from the wrong side of the trailer park.

"I am going tomake magazines," she drawls, her lips pouted in the discount lipstick shade. Her mother clucks and tells her to hold on to her dreams, they'll keep her safe, then returnsback to the chippeddishes piled in the sink. And Julie stands there for a minute, sick of her mother being so damn criptic with everything, and knows it will happen. She will do _anything_ to make it happen.

**Trust First  
**Kirsten always knew she was not the first. But that was okay, because Sandy wasn't first either, but that didn't mean he didn't fit into the role of her husband perfectly. Trust had always been the big deal with their entire relationship, especially forgetting the firsts and living in the now - her first, Jimmy, had lived _next door_ to them their entire time in Newport. Well, until that whole fraud thing, but still.

So why can't she just deal with Rachel's reappearance like Sandy had with Jimmy all these years? The answer comes to her, an unsettling burroughing in the pit of her stomach, it was because Jimmy and she never had anything really left over: when it ended finally, somewhere between the two wedding days, it ended: cut and dry, simple. With Rachel, it didn't.

She'd always figured Sandy had taken her dissapearance, however hard it was for him, as a sign they were to be apart. But the funny thing is, what is he supposed to take her reapperance as a sign of?

**The Blockbuster  
**For the second time in the last two years, well actually, for the second time in his entire life, he found himself at the airport. Wait, scratch that, not just at the airport, because he'd been to the airport about a million times. If he could count the number of times he'd been to the airport in his life, and got a penny for each time, he'd be like, loaded... more loaded than now, and that almost sounds conceited but hey, so the life of a Newpsie.

Anyway, the second time he'd been at the airport chasing a girl. Well, chasing down a girl who was kindof leaving on his accord. Kind of. Because with Anna, it was just to find her to _make sure _she wasn't leaving on his accord. And now, with Summer, it really was his accord if you thought about it. Sure, he didn't tell Summer to go have sex in Tuscany with her insanely hot, water-polo-playing boyfriend. Well, actually.. okay, he never told her directly to do just that.

But somehow the whole falling in love with her, leaving her and breaking her heart so that she crawled in bed with the first hunk of man she met was kindof his deal, his fault, his accord. But not really jumping in bed, though, because Zach and Summer hadn't even had sex. But they will, have amazing Tuscan villa sex if he doesn't get his ass to that terminal and listen to the sweet, sweet voice of his Summaluh.

Of course, there are about five hundred different things she could say, and about four hundred eighty-eight of them are stuff he really doesn't want to hear. But heck, running down a girl at an airport? That's like, standing-on-a-booth professing-your-love type stuff, Blockbuster stuff. Getting turned down and rage blackouts and all the other negatives are just _not _what paying movie-goers like to see. There is no other alternative, he sure as hell is getting his Hollywood ending.

...of course, Tuscan villa sex is pretty enti- nevermind.

**The Brothers  
**Lyndsay hates Ryan. And Summer hates Seth... again. So they're just two brothers. Sitting on a couch, watching a slightly off-kitler red-faced monster-ish _thing _try to make right all the things he can't help but make wrong. Something about it is metaphorical, Ryan thinks, and Seth would like it because he's into all that metaphor stuff. That's why he likes the Valley, but don't tell anyone or anything, because Seth would kill him.

Sitting on a couch, and this is his brother. He reminds himself this alot lately, like when he saw his messy little head underneath a blanket on the couch, like when he hyperactively blabbers like theirs no tomorrow, like when he's sitting across him at the dinner table, like when he doesn't have a shirt on his almost pathetically scrawny upper half but manages to look so _Seth-like, _or when he licks his lips randomly and there's that one really tempting flash of his pink tongue...

But those aren't the moments he's supposed to dwell on, nope, no siree, despite the fact that Seth has just done exactly that ( the lip thing ) and itjust make those annoying little non-Ryan butterflies start freaking out in the pit of his stomach. Collecting himself, he turns back to the demon on the screen. Maybe he's destined to screw everything up in this beach town, and he's done a pretty good job. Of course all those things Seth makes him want to would only make that easier...

Nope. Not dwelling. Sandy's coming in, oh fruitful distraction, and Seth is doing all the talking ... no big difference. Explaining of situation, and Sandy holds out the white plastic bag that Ryan knows from Kirsten's lack of culinary ability is Chinese. But somehow, all the non-dwelling he's doing about Seth makes him too nervous to really eat anything.

He says no, expecting Seth to rejoice in the left over, but hears his _brother's _voice chime with his in rejection. What? Seth doesn't turn down Chinese unless something is really irking him. Sandy moves to dejectedly sit on the couch for the hated alpha males, causing Seth to do the absolute worst thing at this moment when Ryan is most certainly not dwelling on his sexuality: scoot closer.

In a fraction of a second, he readjusts to try to regain some sort of a clear head and finds Seth doing the same thing. See? They've been together so long they do the same things, because that is what brothers do. And as he can almost feel the heat coming off Seth sitting so close beside him, and its not even warm. And all that non-dwelling gets harder...

* * *

**Author's note: **heyyy guys. Been on a fic break. Vignettes are healthy, these kindof suck, but its better than nothing. "The Blockbuster" is inspired by the teaser for next week, so I didn't see it fit as a spoiler or anything. I have no idea what happens, and I don't even know if Seth goes to the airport. But its okay. And the slash? Sorry. Couldn't help it. There was a fidget at the end on Ryan's part that had my mind twirling. Eeee. Don't be too cruel if you review.

**_Review, please?_**


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